1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a structure for combining a flexible circuit board and a hinge assembly, and in particular to a method and a structure for realizing penetration and combination of a flexible circuit board with a hinge assembly.
2. The Related Arts
A lot of electronic devices or communication devices that are currently available in the market use hinge structures. For example, in the structure designs of the currently prevailing mobile phones, a cover or a screen is often coupled to a phone body with a hinge structure. To allow electronic signals to be transmitted to the cover or screen, a currently adopted solution is using a miniaturized flexible cable product or extremely thin conductors that are bundled together to serve as a transmission line for signals.
Although the solution of using miniaturized cable or bundled thin conductors to serve as a transmission line of signals may suit the needs for transmission of signals, yet the size of the hinge structure is constrained from further downsizing. This poses a significant constraint to the structure design of the entire mobile phone. Further, in the applications of the contemporary mobile phone designs or notebook computers, signals that need to be transmitted through the hinge structure are getting more and more and the size of the hinge structure is required to be increasingly smaller, accompanied with the substitute of one-dimensional structures of hinge with two-dimensional structures, the conventional designs of flat cable no longer suit the needs.
Under such a condition, if the conventional designs of flat cable are still adopted, even through the flat cable itself is capable of penetrating through a bore of the hinge structure, in the operation of an electronic device including the hinge structure, the operation of the hinge structure is often affected by the flat cable. Further, the flat cable is also undesirably driven by a rotation operation initiated by a user to have individual wires of the flat cable entangling with each other and twisted. Such a situation, if getting severe, may cause damage to some of the wires of the flat cable.
Although some manufacturers makes the bore of the hinge structure a C-shaped holes to overcome the need for penetration and combination of a flexible circuit board and a hinge structure, this complicates the structure of the bore of the hinge structure.